Charles Grandison Finney

Charles Grandison Finney (29 August 1792-16 August 1875) was an American Presbyterian minister and the father of modern Christian revivalism, helping to spur on the Second Great Awakening.

Biography
Charles Grandison Finney was born in Warren, Connecticut in 1792, and he lived in western New York, where he worked as a lawyer. He later became a minister, and he saw the changes that the Erie Canal brought to his homeland: towns swelled with new and prosperous inhabitants, who brought with them prostitution, drinking, and gambling. Finney saw New York canal towns as ripe for evangelical awakening, and, in Rochester, New York, he sustained a six-month revival in the winter of 1830-31, generating thousands of converts. He argued that a reign of Christian perfection loomed, and he promoted Sunday schools to bring piety to children, sought to end mail delivery, public transport, and shopping on Sundays, and supported argumentation, rallies, and speeches to sell his cause. His object, he said, was to get Americans to vote Jesus Christ as the governor of the universe. He also became an abolitionist, aand he was President of Oberlin College in Ohio from 1851 to 1866. He died in 1875.